MONSON – Students raced with flippers on their feet, pushed their friends in shopping carts while blindfolded, dove into whipped cream pies and raced in potato sacks. Teachers broke into a Zumba-inspired flash mob dance - and all while the principal was duct-taped to the gymnasium wall.

It was winter carnival time at Monson High School on Friday, an annual event that pits each class against each other in a series of madcap competitions that also featured a scooter race, three-legged race, beach ball boogie, obstacle course and dramatic three-point basketball shoot-out.

“Let’s go seniors!” was a constant chant.

And go they did- winning a majority of the nine competitions.

“It’s all about school spirit. They get to act like kids and have fun,” said guidance director Robert Bardwell, who later strutted his stuff on the gymnasium floor as part of the flash mob.

The master of ceremonies was physical education teacher Eric T. Degnan, who explained why math teacher Tracie A. Lamson - wearing a T-shirt with “Mama” on the back - was slowly duct-taping Principal Andrew H. Linkenhoker to the wall.

For a dollar a strip, students could pay to stick the 190-pound Linkenhoker to the wall. And the student who spent the most money got the chance to pull the chair out from underneath him, leaving him suspended like a painting.

“This is a fundraiser for the Student Council,” Linkenhoker explained. “We talked about it together.”

Joseph Willis, who had his face painted in school colors of blue and white, won the shopping cart for the seniors. Willis said he looks forward to the winter carnival.

“It gives us a chance to compete against the other classes,” Willis said.

The pie-eating contest featured four students who slid on scooters across the gym floor into a whipped cream pie. They then had to find a piece of bubble gum and blow a bubble - a difficult feat to do since the gum was frozen.

Senior Joseph Shrewsbury was madly chewing and trying in vain to blow a bubble as a bunch of his classmates pounded the gym floor and urged him on. Finally, he blew the bubble, winning the contest. With his face still covered in whipped cream, he and several other seniors ran over to freshman Nick Lloyd, still struggling with his pie, and taunted him. Turns out that’s tradition, according to Shrewsbury.

“It’s a blast,” Shrewsbury said about the winter carnival.

“It was tough,” Lloyd conceded. “The whipped cream got gross after a while. I like pie, but it was all whipped cream.”

During a lull, counselor Dale Conrad asked Linkenhoker how he was doing.

“Just hanging around,” Linkenhoker replied.

The three-point shoot-out added an element of drama as it came down to freshman Kyle Table and senior Jordan Whittemore.

“He’s a freshman!” chanted the underclassmen.

“Let’s go Jordan!” yelled the seniors.

In an upset, Table beat Whittemore by two baskets, 9 to 7, prompting Degnan to declare it “the most impressive three-point shoot-out we’ve ever had” and to announce to the teachers along the sidelines that Table made a name for himself that day.

That was the only competition that the freshmen won, and Table's classmates cheered as he returned to his spot on the bleachers.

But by the end, when it was clear the seniors would win, they were chanting, “It’s all over!”

Alyssa Pacocha, who said her strategy during the flipper race was running like a duck with her legs out, said the winter carnival is “a way to get everyone together” and have fun, too.

The nicknames and sayings that the seniors put on the backs of their T-shirts is one of the amusing parts of the competition. Pacocha had “Katniss,”a nod to the heroine of the “Hunger Games” books and “Aly Baba,” while Whittemore had “Mrs. Gronkowski” and Dennis Vacon had “Mrs. Brady” – referring to Patriots football stars Rob Gronkowski and Tom Brady.

The duct-tape fundraiser raised $153, and freshman Quintin Ostrander was the one who pulled the chair out from underneath the principal.